Author: Mirrordance
E-mail: mirror_dance@hotmail.com
Title: Dead Waters
Type: series
Spoilers: basically references to stuff all throughout the series.
Warnings: angst, language and violence
Teaser: Ken befriends a hesitant Farfello in strange circumstances,
Ran gets hasseled by an investigative reporter looking into
vigilante groups, and Schwarz want to collaborate with Weiss against
a common enemy...
Keywords: Weiss, Schwarz, Action

"And one of the elders of the city said, Speak to us of Good and Evil.

And he answered:

Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.

For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?

Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters..."

--an excerpt from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran

"Dead Waters"

Part 5

      Deep within one of Kritiker's expansive bases, Ken and Farfello had just delivered Manx to a conference room and the Japanese boy was covertly leading the way to the infirmary as he walked beside the Irishman.

      "So," Ken asked, "I guess it's these Gowe-farenthieit-whatever guys are the ones who ordered you to kill me, huh?"

      Farfello snickered.  "Yeah.  I guess.  There was this voice in my head"

      "How did you know to kill the other me instead?" asked Ken, genuinely curious.

      "I'm not sure"

      Ken stopped by the double doors to the infirmary.  "You're going to have to get that shoulder looked at"

      Farfello glanced at it, as if he had suddenly just noticed.  "Fuck"

      "Omi meant well," Ken was quick to say.

      Farfello touched the wound tentatively.  "Take it easy, I don't blame the kid"

      Ken looked at the injury, winced a bit.  "Does it really…I mean do you really…"
      "Not feel?" Farfello filled in, "yeah.  It's a bitch, isn't it? I could walk around town with a goddamn knife sticking out of my back and not know it until I see it or someone tells me.  Or I just drop dead and realize I'm dying from blood-loss.  But as I'm sure you know, it has its perks too"

      The two walked inside, and Ken grabbed some gauze and tape and antiseptic.  He knew his way around here.  Ken removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. 

      Wordlessly, he had offered his assistance.  It was just as quietly accepted. 

      In that moment, the way each of them had looked at things had drastically changed.

      Ken looked at the scars on Farfello's back, and knew how much pain the Irishman must have gone through, whether self-inflicted or not.  They belittled Omi's dart mark.  As he worked, he watched his own bandaged wrists.

      Farfello had learned the first night that they weren't much different after all.  Ken was seeing it just now, and it was a funny, lingering feeling.

      After coffee and some cigarettes (and practically zero conversation), Ran, Yoji, Brad and Schuldich went over to see what Nagi and Omi have come up with in the computer…

      Both the PC and the laptop were being used, one for each of them.  The first thought that came to mind was that they must have been working really hard.

      The second thought was that they were playing Starcraft.

      Schuldich snorted and caught their attention, making them sheepishly quit the game.

      "Aren't you busy?" he sneered.

      "We have the answers," said Nagi, "we pooled our resources.  I never thought it would ever be this easy.  We just decided to wait 'til Manx and the others return to break the news"

      Ran considered asking for the answers now, but if the two didn't see the urgency, then he decided to bide his time.  Apparently, so did the others.

      "So," asked Crawford in such a way that made the rest of them wonder whether or not he was just being a smart-ass, "who was winning?"

      Manx, Ken and Farfello returned in a few hours, with a solution that sounded so inanely obvious they needn't have gone and discussed it in a committee.

      "The mission is to terminate the organization," said Manx, "either through the heads of the S.S., or make them useless by eliminating their henchmen"

      "I could have guessed that," pointed out Yoji, "what took you so long?"
      "They discussed what to do about us," said Crawford flatly.

      "And what did they come up with?" asked Omi.

      "As they said," replied Manx, "we do need each other.  But we cannot trust.  Yet.  The immediate orders are for you, Weiss, not to let these men out of your sights, should they choose to collaborate with the opposition and make them even more powerful"

      Ran look plaintively around the room.  That meant they had to live in the same roof for God knew how long.  This was going to be crazy.

      "What makes you think we'll take orders from you?" Schuldich asked, to no one in particular.

      "You know we're right," said Manx, and his silence confirmed this.

      "We found some useful stuff too," said Omi, "See, we used their singular weak link; that is Raphaeli Soto, also known as the Shadow.  We were hoping to nail this in one try, nip it at the bud so to say, so we tapped into his bank account, only to find that he was receiving pay-offs not directly from one of the S.S.'s heads, but from a certain Mr. Cecco, whose finely doctored files named him to be some kind of foreign entrepreneur.  But there was no other record of him.  We thought we were in a dead-end, until we decided to check out hotels for possible check-ins, and came across the name Mr. Bill Jukes.  See the connection now?"

      The others looked at him blankly.

      "Bill Jukes and Cecco are both pirates working under Captain Hook," says Nagi, "from the novel Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie"

      Ken rolled back his eyes.  Geez.  No ne lse ould have known that.

      "It wasn't so hard after that," says Omi proudly, "all around the city we tracked down Smee, Starkey, Ed Teynte, Noodler, Mullins and Cookson.  They shouldn't have bothered.  Almost any high school student from our place could crack this case.  Reading reports, you know"

      "The shape-shifter was called Noodler," said Nagi, "and is also known by the name Ramon Salez, a former mercenary.  We researched their activities for the past year, and found that they have been going to a laboratory outside of town regularly; every fifteenth of the month"
      "At first," says Omi, "we thought that these were regular check-ups for their genetic alterations"

      "Then," continued Nagi, and the two of them were unknowingly sounding like strange brothers, "we hacked into police files and used Kritiker codes to access information on the people the Shadow had tested on.  Reportedly, all of them had temporary powers.  Geworfenheit has to come back once in awhile to renew the alterations.  The Shadow never came up with permanent effects"

      "No," said Schuldich thoughtfully, "Of course he had, the man was a genius for crying out loud.  Think about it.  This was intentional.  The S.S. paid the Shadow to come up with temporary effects, so Geworfenheit would be in their control forever"

      "For whatever reason," said Ken diplomatically, "we have a shot at this thing.  There would be one whole day, a few hours at least, when we can overpower them"

      "What date is it?" Manx asked anxiously.

      "The tenth" said Ran gravely.

      "Now all we gotta do is wait this out," said Nagi with a frown.

      Wait it out.

      They slept in shifts, as there were just four bedrooms in the building.

      Ran and Yoji stayed awake, as did Schuldich and Crawford.  The stalemates seemed to be decided on unanimously.  It was doubtful whether or not those above actually slept at all, but nevertheless, that was where they were.

      At about sunrise, Omi went down to breakfast, eyes alight as if coming out of a fever, looking no more rested as he had the night before, but seeming excited; bearing an old copy of Peter Pan, looking for more clues.

      Ken, Farfello and Nagi came down soon afterwards, and everyone had breakfast, which was cooked by Ran and Crawford in a compromise; no one wanted to consider the possibility of getting poisoned, after all.

      "A happy family, breaking bread together," Schuldich sneered as he looked down on his breakfast of sausages and eggs. 

      The comment pretty much summed up the irony of everything, and also pretty much guaranteed that further table-conversation was close to null.